A Quote by Johann Gustav Droysen
History is the "know thyself" of humanity - the self-consciousness of mankind.
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History is the self-consciousness of humanity.
The truth is that we are a part of God. God could not have created anything except out of his own consciousness. We're all his dream, and our duty in life that God has assigned to us, that the universe has placed squarely in our laps, is to find out who we really are. "Gnothi seauton," as the Greeks used to say. "Know thyself." But to know thyself, if you trace it back, to the deeper and deeper levels, you discover that that self is not your body or your ego or your personality or your country or anything, that's just a sack of self-definitions that you carry around with you
To know thyself--in others self-concern;
Would'st thou know others? read thyself--and learn!
But, in history, practical usefulness never determines the moral value of an achievement. Only the person who increases the knowledge humanity has about itself and enhances its creative consciousness permanently enriches humanity.
On the deepest level, what I know for sure is that who I am, essentially, is consciousness and consciousness is timeless and it transcends the body; it transcends the psychological "me," the egoic self. Everybody can know themselves as consciousness.
Know thyself. Nothing in excess. The Self is required to balance the Self.
Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, and spirituality is not narcissism. 'Know thyself' is not a narcissistic pursuit.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.
Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, "know thyself," but as if prompted by the commandment: will a self, and so become a self.
Recent history is the record of one vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind.
For self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self; therefore curb thyself as the merchant curbs a good horse.
From a pure metaphysical perspective, there is no world outside ourselves. So, at the deepest level, the state of the planet is more a reflection of the consciousness of mankind than the consciousness of mankind is a reflection of world events.
I do not see them here; but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. 'I am thyself,what hast thou done to me?' 'And Iand Ithyself,' (lo! each one saith,) 'And thou thyself to all eternity!
Anything an artist does is to show ourselves as we really are, which is a complex thing. I don't think that one work of Philosophy or Art, or Letters, or Acting, or Middle Playing, or Tightrope Walking, or Flea Circuses has made mankind better, if by better you mean kinder, wiser, more tolerant of each other. One thing self knowledge. Knoticayton: know thyself.
After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise, it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity.
Nearly all mankind is more or less unhappy because nearly all do not know the true Self. Real happiness abides in Self-knowledge alone. All else is fleeting. To know one's Self is to be blissful always.
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